I was ordered to a post underneath a very broad and low spreading tree, so that when I sat upon my horse I was not visible from the thicket in front, and would not have been even if it had been broad daylight.
That thicket was full of sharp-shooters, and when I went on post about seven o’clock in the evening, I was instructed to preserve absolute silence in self-protection, and warned that it would probably not be possible to relieve me until morning.
My mare was a restless creature at ordinary times, but she had learned the whole art of picket duty. If I had been anywhere else, she would have champed the bit, and pawed the ground, and snorted in her restlessness. Standing there at night, with a bullet whistling over her head every minute or two, she was as still as the traditional mouse.
I sat there all night on her back with pistols drawn, and in a silence such as nobody but a picket thus placed ever maintains.
Just as the day was dawning, or rather just as the gray in the eastern sky began to suggest the possibility of dawn, a sergeant crawling on his belly approached me from the rear. In a whisper I called out, “Who goes there?” He, also in a whisper, let me know his identity. He had come to order my withdrawal from the post.
Not until we had reached a point a hundred yards in the rear was anything further said. There I found the company drawn up in line with Charlie Irving at its head.
“Many shots from the thicket?” asked Charlie.
“Two or three to the minute,” I answered, “throughout the night.”
“All right,” he replied, “we’ll scoop those fellows in; they’re getting to be obnoxious.”
Then in a low tone he told us precisely what we were to do, and we were to do it without further orders. He was to lead, of course, but he wanted to give as few commands as possible, in order to make his movement successful.